New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships: http://multitree.linguistlist.org/
LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature: Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process abstracts online. Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3!

A research project 'From competing theories to fieldwork: the challenge of an extreme agreement system' starts at Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey, in January 2012.

The aim of the project is to create a framework for comparing and evaluating the claims of leading theories of syntax (HPSG, LFG and Minimalism) by focusing on one core area of syntax, namely agreement. Specifically, we shall use data from the Daghestanian language Archi, which has an outstandingly rich and complex agreement system, for analyses in each of the leading theories.

The project will be structured around a cycle of working seminars. The contributors will be the typology/fieldwork team (SMG), giving a clear account of the Archi material, and the three syntax experts, who will be invited to give an analysis of the Archi constructions within their theory: the HPSG account will be provided by Robert Borsley (Essex), the LFG account by Louisa Sadler (Essex) and the Minimalism account by Maria Polinsky (Harvard).

The seminars will be organised by the Surrey Morphology Group and are open to PhD students. If you would like to participate, please let us know in advance by emailing to Marina Chumakina (m.tchoumakinasurrey.ac.uk).

10:30 - 13:00 General overview of Archi (sound system, inflectional morphology, syntax - concentrating on phenomena essential for this project), Greville Corbett and Marina Chumakina. This will include a 30 minutes coffee break at